Mario Kart 7 surprises with robust online play (preview)

For those of you who doubt the power of Mario Kart, I give you this story about my three cousins. They are the hardest of the hard-core PC gamers. When they latch onto a competitive online title, they stick with it, tenaciously mastering its intricacies. They play hundreds of matches until their eyes glaze over, absorbing as much knowledge as they can from Warcraft II to Quake III to Starcraftto Super Street Fighter IV.

But one thing that’s always baffled me was their fascination with the Mario Kart series. It seems to be the most unlikely franchise for them to drift toward, but when I visited them a few years back, they were engrossed in that game. Later the three of them explained to me that one got a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart DS. One started playing and the other tried it out and got hooked. He bought his own Nintendo DS with the kart racer. Soon the third brother caught the itch and purchased his own. They played it relentlessly.

If one needed proof of software selling hardware, that’s exhibit A. But can that happen again with a system that’s more expensive and less established? I can see lightning striking twice, especially given the online play of Mario Kart 7. I had a chance to check it out last week in relatively ideal conditions at the Nintendo office in Redwood City.

COIN COLLECTING IS BACK: But before I got behind the wheel, the Nintendo representative showed me the basics. It has a touch of the old-school with the inclusion of coin-collecting. In Mario Kart 7, players grab coins on the track and that raises their top speed. Players can keep collecting until they reach 10 coins. After that, it maxes out.

When it comes to new items, there are three of them: The leaf adds a tanooki tail that can spin out nearby foes. There’s a fire flower that lets players spit out fireballs just as Mario does. Both of these last a limited time. Lastly, there’s a super item called a Lucky 7 that gives players seven items at once.

But those are minor tweaks compared to the fundamental change that allows the new karts to travel across land, sea and air. The vehicles take players to new areas and offer the biggest change to the kart racing franchise. Under water, players can’t exactly drift and they’ll be slower than on land. In the air, they have the ability to glide through the track, potentially finding short cuts.

If that wasn’t enough, players now have the ability to mix and match parts but these changes aren’t cosmetic though. The differing pieces affect how karts handle on land and in the air. What’s more, players have to unlock these items by collecting the aforementioned coins or by going through the single-player campaign and winning races.

Unfortunately, online events don’t give credits toward unlockable parts, but players can still use the pieces in competition.

TWO WAYS FOR MULTIPLAYER PLAY: Speaking of that, the multiplayer mode comes in two flavors — local and online. The first is the standard ad hoc play that requires players to be near each other and have copies of the game. They can offer up a game share, but those who download it can only play as Shy Guy and have fewer options.

The online mode is surprisingly robust for a Nintendo title. They can go to Worldwide and compete against other players online. The game will try to match you to strangers close to your skill level based on your Virtual Rating. The People and Friends option lets players battle those on their friends list. Lastly, Communities is a loose-knit group that you can form in the game. It’s a grouping method that lies somewhere between Worldwide and Friends. The closest feature I can compare this to is the Groups in Call of Duty Elite.

BUILDING COMMUNITIES: Players can make a Community based on being a Laker fan or one focused on a city. To be part of a Community, players hand out the code for it on a message board or via Twitter and whoever enters the code is in. The astounding part is that a Community can support up to 10,000 members. Of course, they all can’t play against each other at the same time but it can be a way of finding rivals who aren’t completely strangers.

Once you’re in a match, you get a nice overview of where players are from. They appear somewhere on the globe based on what city they say they live in during the registration on the Nintendo 3DS. Don’t worry it doesn’t get any specific than that. There’s no chatting per se but players can offer their thoughts via preset responses.

FOUR TYPES OF PLAY MODES: After that, it’s off to the races or battles if you’re so inclined. There are four different modes of play: Grand Prix, Time Trials, Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. The Grand Prix is a straightfoward race. I never got higher than second, but I did fairly well for someone who sped through the track oblivious to all the short cuts. There’s a mixture of new and old courses, many are fan favorites from the previous games.

Time Trials is interesting because players can download numerous ghosts via SpotPass and race against all of them at the same time. Nintendo plans offering up ghosts from developers and other well-known names. Overall, players can load up to eight different ghosts and have a go at trying to beat them, all at the same time.

Balloon Battle is the classic mode that’s been around since the SNES original. This time around, losing all your balloons won’t automatically eliminate you from the match. It’s all about nailing rivals in the arena (that gives you a point) and avoiding being hit (that cuts into your score by one point).

Lastly, Coin Runners is similar to Balloon Battle but instead of drivers carrying balloons, they’ll wheel around an arena collecting as many coins as possible. While you’re doing that though, rivals are trying to spin you out and rob you of your hard-earned loot. The player with the most coins at the end of the match wins. This is a blast and the fact that you can see the stack of coins a player has leads to some entertaining 3 on 1 match-ups.

Fans looking forward to playing Mario Kart 7 don’t have to wait long. The game is scheduled for release Dec. 4.